Speech recognition systems and/or hands-free calling systems may be provided in automobile cabins. However, achieving good speech recognition and/or good hands-free phone call quality in a vehicle can be problematic due to the extremely noisy nature of the vehicle environment. Sources of noise include the sounds generated by wind, mechanical and structural features, tires, passengers, engine, exhaust, HVAC air pressure, etc. Cabin acoustics also affect speech recognition and hands-free call quality. Vehicle interior materials, geometry, etc., will have an impact on the propagation of a user's voice to a hands-free microphone responsible for speech recognition and/or hand-free phone calling tasks.
The traditional approach to training and evaluation of a speech recognition engine or the evaluation of the hands-free call quality includes driving vehicles under various test conditions over various road surfaces. A person's utterances embedded in various vehicle background sounds are recorded at the output of a hands-free microphone. These recordings are then used for subsequent speech recognition or for hands-free phone call evaluation. This traditional approach is very time consuming, logistically difficult, expensive, and fraught with experimental variability.